In
Mankind in Amnesia, a manuscript unpublished at the time of his
death, Immanuel Velikovsky offered his evaluation of the psych­ological
condition of the human race. In this, his final opus, he built upon the
earlier work of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, who had inde­pendently come to
the conclusion that neurosis in the individual is evidence of the surfacing
of a deeply embedded collective condition affecting all of humanity. Freud
and Jung differed in their ideas concerning the origin of this collective
condition: Freud attributed it to the Oedipus drama of the son killing the
father in order to possess the mother, this presumably having been a
widespread practice in prehistoric times; Jung, however, maintained that
man­kind's collective subconscious is populated by primeval archetypes which
shape our patterns of thought and behavior. Both Freud and Jung assumed
that the content of the collective subconscious is ultimately an inherent
aspect of the biological organism: for Freud, the Oedipus drama was the
inevitable outcome of universal sexual urges; for Jung, archetypes were the
psychological analogue of a wider range of instincts.

Velikovsky, however, considered the irrational aspects of the collective
human subconscious as acquired, not inherent. As an historian as well as a
psychoanalyst, with an awareness of the global catastrophes which have on
several occasions destroyed civilizations and plant and animal species and
radically altered climate and topography, Velikovsky held a key to the
understanding of man's collective behavior - a key which went undiscovered
by Freud or Jung. Given the tendency for individuals to repress the memory
of traumatic events - once they are repressed, there is a recurrent
compulsion to reenact the experience - and given the fact that humanity has
experienced severe traumas in the historical past, we should expect human
beings collectively and individually to exhibit some of the symptoms of the
typical amnesia victim.

In this paper we shall explore some implications of Velikovsky's diagnosis,
first with regard to religious myth as a remnant not only of the
catastrophes, but also of the state of human consciousness prior to the time
when "the great fear" began to take hold. Using these myths as a key, we
shall examine the ubiquity and insidiousness of the collective amnesia
phenomenon in human consciousness today and explore one--perhaps the
only--way out of the dilemma.

I would emphasize that the thesis I am presenting is not drawn from the
contents of Mankind in Amnesia. It is a corollary of the central
theme of that book, but whether Dr. Velikovsky would have agreed with my
conclusions I do not know.

THE GARDEN

If we are in fact experiencing a state of collective amnesia, there
must have been a time before the amnesia set in, since every
disorder is necessarily defined in relation to a state of health.
Ancient records of that period of health and order should
presumably describe a condition free of the effects of collective
amnesia; they would tell of a time when there was no war,
institutionalized irrationality and cruelty, or individual and
collective self-destructive behavior. Records of such a state--the
paradise myths--do exist. Yet the idea that there may actually have
been a "golden age" runs against the grain of man's current ideas of
progress and evolution. Since anthropologists and historians have
consistently viewed paradise myths as nothing more than folkloristic
inventions, if we presume to take the myths seriously we must first
consider whether there are anthropological and archaeological
grounds for entertaining the possibility that they may contain
elements of historical truth.

The idea of progress is a relatively recent one: many ancient
authorities, such as Epicurus, Origen, Plutarch, Lucretius, Philo of
Alexandria, and Plato believed that their ancestors were superior to
themselves. It is now recognized that during some periods this
belief had a foundation in fact: the European civilization of 600
years ago, for example, was in many ways more primitive than the
Near Eastern, Chinese, Indian, and Meso-American cultures of
centuries earlier.

Velikovsky was fascinated by the ingenuity and acumen of the
ancients: in an unpublished manuscript titled Shamir
[2],
he cites evidence that radioactive material, hypnosis, and
atmospheric electricity were understood and used millennia ago. He
respected what ancient peoples conveyed to us about their
experiences: if they could build the pyramids, compute the
circumference of the Earth and build well-planned cities with
running water, must we consider them such unreliable witnesses to
natural events in their time that their descriptions must be
interpreted as hyperbole, allegory or fantasy?

It is inappropriate here to offer a lengthy catalogue of the
physical evidence of advanced human cultures in prehistory. Such
evidence has been gathered and presented in detail by a number of
researchers
[3]
and includes great walls and roads now submerged under oceans;
copper and iron mines tens of thousands of years old; giant
mega­lithic grids of menhirs and standing stones; other megalithic
stones too heavy to move with modern cranes, yet somehow transported
far from their quarries (such as the 1000 ton trilithon at Baalbek);
imprints of sandal-clad human feet in sandstone conventionally dated
in millions of years; and so on. Based on such fragmentary and
enigmatic evidence, no definite conclusion can be drawn; yet the
anomalies are so numerous and unaccountable that we may feel
justified in setting to one side, for now, the conventional theories
concerning man's consciousness and culture prior to the preserved
historical record.

Perhaps our ancestors of the last few millennia before the present
era were not creatures on a smoothly inclining evolutionary path,
midway between cave and condominium, but travelers on a hilly road,
survivors descended from survivors, heirs of a culture already
nearly forgotten, destroyed so completely that only legends and a
few artifacts remained. The catastrophe of ca. 1500 B. C.
was sufficient to terminate civilizations, decimate populations,
eradicate species and alter topography; yet compared with the
earlier Deluge this must have been like a minor aftershock following
a devastating earthquake. When we examine the geological record of
the catas­trophic conclusion of the Pleistocene Epoch, we see some
indication of the severity of the stresses to which living forms
were then subjected.

Prior to the Deluge the level of the oceans may have been as much as
three miles lower than today; extinct creatures - perhaps some
dinosaurs - still roamed the Earth; few of the mountains we see in
our time yet existed in anything like their present form; the
atmo­sphere may have had a different oxygen content; perhaps our
planet was not even a satellite of the same star around which it now
revolves. Rather than marvel at the number of casualties of that
paroxysm, we should wonder that there were any survivors. Under
such circumstances, is it not conceivable that our Cro-Magnon
forebearers descended rather than ascended to the Stone Age? If we
are willing to consider this interpretation as a possibility, then
we are in position to view the paradise myths in a new light.

The most familiar of the paradise myths is contained in the first
two chapters of Genesis:

And the LORD God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put
the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground made the LORD God
to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food;
the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of
the knowledge of good and evil.... And the LORD God took the man and
put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it....
(Genesis 2:8, 9, 15)

Chapter two of Genesis concludes: "And they were both naked,
the man and his wife, and were not ashamed." Thus is described a
state of innocence, guilelessness, and purity, from which man fell
upon eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

The Indians of the Brahmanic period preserved the following in
the Mahabharata:

The Krita Yuga was so named because there was but one religion, and
all men were saintly: therefore they were not required to perform
religious ceremonies. Holiness never grew less, and the people did
not decrease. There were no gods in the Krita Yuga, and there were
no demons. . . .-Men neither bought nor sold; there were no poor and
no rich; there was no need to labor, because all that men required
was obtained by the power of will; the chief virtue was the
abandonment of worldly desires. The Krita Yuga was without disease;
there was no lessening with the years; there was no hatred, or
vanity, or evil thought whatsoever; no sorrow, no fear ....
[4]

Hesiod wrote similarly of the Golden Age of Kronos:

First, the immortal dwellers on Olympus fashioned a golden race of
men, who lived in the time when Kronos was king in Heaven. They
lived like gods, and their souls knew neither sorrow nor toil.
Neither were they subject to age, but ever the same in hand and
foot, they spent their time in leisure apart from evil.... The
bounteous earth bare fruit for them of her own will, in plenty and
without stint. They lived in peace and quiet in their lands with
many good things, rich in flocks and dear to the blessed gods.
[5]

Again, in the early mythology of China we find a similar vein: "It
is remarkable," writes James Legge, "that at the commencement of
Chinese history, Chinese tradition placed a period of innocence, a
season when order and virtue ruled in men's affairs." Speaking of
the perfect men of old, Kwang Tze (ca. 400 B. C.) says,

In the age of perfect virtue, they attached no value to wisdom....
They were upright and correct, without knowing that to be so was
righteousness; they loved one another, without knowing that to do so
was benevolence; they were honest and leal-hearted without knowing
that it was loyalty; they fulfilled their engagements, with­out
knowing that to do so was good faith; in their simple movements they
employed the services of one another, without thinking that they
were conferring or receiving any gift. Therefore their actions left
no trace, and there was no record of their affairs.
[6]

Here, then, is another reason, in addition to the Deluge, for the
scar­city of relics from that era.

The traditions of the Hopi Indians tell of an original state no less
idyllic:

So the first people went their directions, were happy, and began to
multiply. With the pristine wisdom granted them, they understood
that the earth was a living entity like themselves. She was their
mother; they were made from her flesh ....
[7]
In their wisdom they also knew their father in two aspects. He was
the Sun, the solar god of their universe.... Yet his was but the
face through which looked Taiowa, their creator.... These universal
entities were their real par­ents, their human parents being but the
instruments through which their power was made manifest ....
[8]
The first people, then, understood the mystery of their parenthood.
In their pristine wisdom they also understood their own structure
and functions--the nature of man himself....
[9]
The first people knew no sickness. Not until
[10]
evil entered the world did persons get sick in the body or head ....

According to Paul Hamlyn, writing in Egyptian Mythology, "The
Egyptians ... shared the view that what they called the 'First
Time,' or the age in which the gods lived on earth....was a golden
age. Forces of destruction may have existed even then, but the
principles of jus­tice reigned over the land"
[11]

Among the most ancient surviving documents are the cuneiform texts
from the Sumerian civilization of the second and third millennia
before the present era. In one such text we read:

In those days there was no snake, there was no scorpion, there was
no fox....

There was no fear, no terror.

Man had no rival.

In those days the land of Shubur, the place of plenty, of righteous
decrees.

The Mayas' Popul Vuh stressed the wisdom of the "first men":
"They were able to know all, and they examined the four corners, the
four points of the arch of the sky and round face of the earth."
But later "the eyes of the first men were covered and they could
only see what was close".
[13]

THE FALL

Each of the paradise myths ends with a fall:

And unto Adam he said, because thou hast... eaten of the tree, of
which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: curst is
the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days
of thy life; thorns and thistles shall it bring forth to thee.... In
the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return to the
ground. And the LORD God said Behold, the man is become as one of
us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and
take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever: Therefore
the LORD God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the
ground from whence he was taken. So he drove out the man; and he
placed at the east of the garden of Eden cherubims, and a flaming
sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.
(Genesis 3:17-24)

Perhaps if the garden of Eden is interpreted as being both a state
of consciousness and a geographical place, certain expressions such
as "he drove the man out" and "a flaming sword which turned every
way" may indicate some upheaval in the natural world which
coin­cided with a diminution of human lifespan ("lest he live for
ever. . . and an end to the peace and fulfillment man had previously
enjoyed.

In the Hindu tradition it is said that

In the Treta Yuga sacrifices began, and ... virtue lessened a
quarter. Mankind sought truth and performed religious ceremonies;
they ob­tained what they desired by giving and by doing. In the
Dwapara Yuga ... religion lessened one-half.... Mind lessened, Truth
declined, and there came desire and diseases and calamities....

In the Kali Yuga [the present age] ... only one quarter of virtue
re­maineth. The world is afflicted, men turn to wickedness; disease
cometh; all creatures degenerate ... change passeth over all things.
[14]

Hesiod describes man's degeneration thus:

Next the dwellers in Olympus created a far inferior race, a race of
silver, no wise like to the golden race in body or in mind.... For
they could not refrain from sinning one against the other, neither
would . they worship the deathless gods.... [Descriptions of the
third and fourth ages follow.] But now verily is a race of iron.
Neither by day shall they ever cease from weariness and woe, neither
in the night from wasting, and sore cares shall the gods give them.
[15]

In the ancient Taoist scriptures, Kwang Tzu laments that

... the paradisiacal state of the early ages had been disturbed by
law-makers. Decadence set in... and continued until the people
became "perplexed and disordered, and had no way by which they might
return to their true nature, and bring back their original
condition".
[16]

The Hopi Indians tell how

... people began to divide and draw away from one another - those of
different races and languages, then those who remembered the plan of
creation and those who did not.

There came among them a handsome one... in the form of a snake with
a big head. He led the people still further away from one another
and their pristine wisdom. They became suspicious of one another
and accused one another wrongfully until they became fierce and
warlike and began to fight one another.
[17]

And today we find that

Man seems to go out of his way to make himself miserable.... Sel­dom
content with himself as he is, he constantly searches for ways to
alter his appearance, increase his wealth, or improve his status.
Whether as a cause or a result of this self-flagellation, man's
dissatisfaction with himself [and his fellow man, one might add]
seems profound.
[18]

If we accept the mythical accounts, the fall was not an event
af­fecting only man's environment: the ancients do of course
describe great cataclysmic upheavals, but in stories of the garden
and the fall the emphasis is on man's character. In the Golden Age
is portrayed a state of harmony between the inner nature of man and
his surface layer of consciousness, and hence his behavior. Later,
it is as though a barrier has arisen between man's outer
consciousness and his inner­most source of being and identity. In
the words of Kwang Tzu, "Decadence. . continued ... until the people
... had no way by which they might return to their true nature."

In Mankind in Amnesia, Velikovsky describes how amnesia need
not be total, but may obliterate only certain traumatic memories.
To the extent that human beings en masse have forfeited
awareness of their true identity, their "true nature," mankind's
amnesia is total. Our sense of identity is relative, according to
circumstances of birth, skills, roles, and self-image. This is the
only sense of identity that is acknowledged to exist--yet there is
the identity of life beneath all the rest. Our species "makes
itself miserable," and routinely practices self destruction (on an
individual and collective basis; gradually as well as all at once)
because we have buried that core identity with life be­neath
stifling masks. Our bodies obviously maintain some association with
life, but in our conscious awareness we have succeeded in avoiding
the moment-to-moment control of inner being in favor of control by
externals.

The first external controls were the planets which approached the
Earth thousands of years ago, wreaking general destruction. As
Vel­ikovsky has shown, most of the gods of the ancients were
represen­tations of the planets Venus, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter and
Saturn. Human sacrifices were brought to the gods in order to
appease them. Fear and dread so gripped and distorted human
consciousness that all trust in the cycles and pulsations of nature
was lost: the dominant experience was one of terror that any moment
the gods might again rain devastation upon the Earth. Later the
planets themselves ceased to be an obvious threat; "god" became a
philosophical concept, a matter of belief or faith. But the
sacrifices continued: human lives Were offered up to the new gods of
political and religious dogma, with fear remaining the principal
means of control.

In early religious myth and historical narrative is portrayed the
con­trast between those who would worship the planets (or their
substi­tutes) and those who carried some remembrance of the inner
source of control. In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna counsels
Arjuna that

One should not rejoice on obtaining what is pleasant nor sorrow in
obtaining what is unpleasant. He who is (thus) firm of
understanding and unbewildered, (such a) knower of God is
established in God. When the soul is no longer attached to external
contacts (objects) one finds the happiness that is in the Self.
Such a one who is self-con­trolled in Yoga on God (Brahma) enjoys
undying bliss.
[19]
The wise who have united their intelligence (with the Divine)
re­nouncing the fruits which their action yields ... reach the
sorrow­less state.
[20]

In the story of Moses the conflict between allegiance to internal
deity and the external planetary deity is discernible. In Exodus
3:13-14 the Lord reveals his name to Moses:

And Moses said unto God, Behold, when I come unto the children of
Israel, and shall say unto them, The God of your fathers hath sent
me unto you; and they shall say unto me, What is his name? what
shall I say unto them?

And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt
thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you.

Meanwhile, there was a strong temptation among the Israelites, as
among all people of that time, to worship the planet Venus. Later
in the story, Moses descends from Mount Sinai to find his followers
worshipping a golden calf, symbol of Venus. The Old Testament
continues throughout to develop the theme of the prophets of the
Lord versus those who would worship "strange gods".

The experience of union ("yoga") between inner and outer
consciousness surfaces again and again, in different times and
places. Siddhartha Gautama, later known as the Buddha, claimed to
offer an experience rather than a belief system or doctrine; his
teaching was intended to communicate a direct experience of
Reality. Reality, according to the Buddha, is beyond logic,
description or classification, because terms only have meaning in
relation to their opposites, and Reality has no opposite. One might
think that to perceive reality is normal; we make the assumption
that we are doing so all the time. Yet the fragmented, irrational
world human beings have made is testimony to the fact that seldom
does anyone see clearly--we filter our perceptions according to our
previously formed opinions, and in the process the uniqueness of the
present moment is lost.

In China, at about the same time the Buddha was teaching the way to
enlightenment, Lao Tzu was using the word "Tao" to describe the "way
of life". "The Tao" is usually translated as simply "the way": it
is the way of creation, the way nature constantly brings forth
newness and life without effort or striving by allowing each thing
to act according to its nature. The object of Lao Tzu's teaching
was the experience of being the Tao in expression in each moment, in
every action.

In addition to this pure, original state of consciousness which
their founders experienced as an everyday fact and offered freely to
others, the major religions have had one other thing in common: the
general inability of the followers to experience for themselves or
to maintain that state of awareness; in each case living word was
crystallized into dogma, doctrine and prejudice - the very factors
which the saint or prophet decried: "Woe to you, scribes and
pharisees, hypocrites."

Once human consciousness began to be dominated by an artificial
identity controlled by externals, the tendency was to seek meaning
in possessions, in belonging to groups, and in roles and
occupations. Man became a puppet on a string, jerked this way and
that by what­ever external factor happened to be pulling--money,
sex, or prestige--which, through their presence or absence, induced
reactions of greed, guilt, shame, and fear.

Often the words of "those who knew" were misinterpreted as meaning
that the whole outside world should be ignored, obliterated from
consciousness; and psychological techniques were invented to produce
such a state. Those who followed this extreme path under­stood part
of the message - that in every organism, solar system, galaxy, atom
or social unit there is a point of focus at the center whence
control must emanate, or disintegration occurs. They rightly sensed
that, in the case of the individual, this point of focus is the
invisible core of being. Yet the function of the outer
con­sciousness is not to peer within to try to observe the
invisible, but to express the compulsion of life into the outer
world. Perception of and expression into the external world are as
vital as the internal factor of being; either is meaningless without
the other, and balance is the key.

The "internal" and "external" factors we are considering do not
correspond with the heredity/environment dichotomy of behavioral
psychologists. Heredity and environment together are the negative
pole to that force or quality which guides heredity and shapes
en­vironment from the inside out, as the invisible force-field of a
magnet arranges iron particles around itself. The quality of
heroism or genius which causes some men and women to rise far above
what could be expected on the basis of environment or heredity is
none other than the compulsion of life in unhindered expression.
Where one appears who offers such expression, institutions and
followers gradually move into position like iron particles reacting
to the stim­ulus of a magnetic field.

Nature regulates her creatures easily and simply, each form of life
acting according to its unique nature, responding to pulsations and
impulses arising from within, some recognizable forms of which are
called "instinct". Once man had lost consciousness of his inner
source of control, through which he was in harmony with the rest of
nature, he found it necessary to externalize what was before
internal and automatic. One of these externalizations was law.
When individual human beings began to act irrationally, it became
necessary to impose arbitrary standards of behavior, and the
concepts of punishment and vengeance naturally put in an appearance
in re­action to the violence man experienced during the upheavals in
his world.

Religion and government, charged with the creation and
admin­istration of laws, began to be differentiated from the
seamless whole of human experience, and irrationality was
simultaneously outlawed and institutionalized. Before, there had
been no distinction between religion, government, science, or any
other aspect of human affairs, but as mankind came more under the
control of externals and alienated from life itself, institutions,
governments and religions proliferated and fragmented. Man's
attitude became one of struggle to wrestle a hostile environment
into submission to his will, to make it safe and secure. This
attitude seemed justified in the face of dire global catastrophes;
in their absence, the hostility is all man's. Man versus nature is
man versus himself.

Marshall McLuhan has shown how our technology and communications
media are externalizations--or extensions--of factors already
present in the human mind and body: the wheel is the extension of
the foot, clothing and shelter are extensions of the skin, printing
of the eye, and electricity of the nervous circuitry. It is likely
that some forms of technology, communications media and institutions
that we consider the very foundations of civilization existed
thousands of years ago in an "internalized" form, and it may be
presumptuous to assume that our externalized imitations are more
effective than the original process or faculty, which meanwhile has
atrophied from disuse.

All creatures express according to their nature, giving form to what
is formless. It is the source of control that differentiates
expression in this sense from what I am calling "externalizing" (for
want of a better term): inner control yields expressions which are
whole, harmonious, and organic. When the minds of men ceased to be
oriented in life and began to react with fear to the external
environ­ment, their expressions began to take on an artificiality, a
defensive and imitative quality.

The tendency to be controlled by externals is so deeply rooted in
human nature that today it is difficult to conceive of the
alternative. What is thought of as anarchy is simply externally
polarized human consciousness without the safety factor of law.
Under present circumstances laws are obviously quite necessary.
"Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's," was Jesus' wise
counsel. for to attempt to change the polarity of consciousness by
manipulat­ing, fighting, or doing away with externals is to continue
to be con­trolled from without. It has to be an "inside job". The
first point at which the expression of any state of consciousness
merges with the outer world is attitude: attitudes such as blame,
fear, and greed reveal and maintain external control, whereas
attitudes such as appreciation, patience, thankfulness, assurance,
radiance, wisdom, and love reveal and release the undistorted
expression of life. The consistent expression of life-positive
attitudes is our only "handle" on our own state of consciousness.
This is the original basis for all ethics, morals, and
values--though once again the process of ex­ternalization has
substituted rules and formulae for what can be experienced only as a
state of being.

THE RESTORATION

The tone of Mankind in Amnesia is intentionally somber.
Velikovsky chose to face a fact that most of us would prefer to
ignore: that today man's world hovers on the brink of annihilation,
not as a result of another rearrangement of the solar system, but of
the actions of man himself. By far the most nightmarish threat is
the ever-present "balance of terror" in which each of the world's
super­powers tries to be as strong as the next, which is already
many times stronger than it needs to be. And as the membership of
the nuclear club"--those nations possessing nuclear weapons--grows,
the chances for keeping the terror in balance diminish.

Velikovsky writes of the thermonuclear arms race and of the
population explosion; he might have mentioned impending economic
collapse, ecological disintegration, the energy shortage, and many
other contributory conditions, any one of which is cause for alarm.
Nearly every factor of societal function, when graphed, reveals a
trend coming to a crisis point within the next thirty years; when
all these trends are correlated, it is difficult to avoid a
prognosis of sheer disaster.

The source of this situation is nothing new; the problem is merely
more obvious now because there are more human beings with more
sophisticated weapons. Given the world we live in and the creature
we presently know as man, the result is inevitable sooner or later.

Mankind's pathological pattern of behavior is so monotonously
predictable that a description of tomorrow's man-made cataclysm can
be found in the eschatological writings of nearly every culture.
The Book of Revelation, the Koran, and others can be considered as
memories of earlier catastrophes projected into the future, or as
self-fulfilling prophecies which have subconsciously programmed
mankind for self-destruction; either way, Armageddon looms.

Yet many of the prophecies which describe the ultimate destruction
by fire also tell of a new age, a millennium of peace, a
restora­tion of the true state of man.

And I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for
the first heaven and the first earth were passed away.... And God
shall wipe away all tears from their eyes-, and there shall be no
more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any
more pain: for the former things are passed away. (Revelation
21:1, 4)

Today there are many religious sects, psychics, and social
prognosticators predicting an end to the old order and the emergence
of something totally new, and in the very near future. Yet, as
filtered through the structures of human consciousness, these
prophecies are reminiscent of the blind man's attempts to describe
the elephant: "born again" Christians await the Second Coming while
psychics predict a new age in which everyone will be psychic;
Iranians envision a reformed world ruled by medieval Moslem
clergymen, while science fiction buffs look toward a visit of
superior beings piloting flying saucers, arriving just in time to
set man's messy affairs in order. Something inherently
indescribable is welling up from the depths of the human
subconscious, waiting to burst forth--and human beings try to grasp
it in the net of their familiar concepts.

Neo-Darwinian evolutionists see the new age as a condition toward which
we are evolving, while fundamentalists say that God will plunk it down
from heaven without warning. Yet the truth need not conform with either
preconception: obviously the species has undergone fundamental changes
since prehistoric times, and thus it is impossible to return to the
physical and spiritual world of our distant ancestors. Yet, not all of
the changes which have taken place in man are evolutionary; some came
about as reactions to catastrophes and are classifiable as pathological
degeneration rather than develop­mental evolution. Thus, if (as we
might hope) humankind is cured of its amnesia, this happy result will be
attributable neither to evolution nor arbitrary deity. It will be the
result of man's re­awakening. The benefactor and beneficiary will be
life itself, breaking through the dam of crystallized structures in
man's consciousness to express itself freely and clearly once again
through human form.

[1] Editor's
Note: The following paper was first presented at the
Princeton Seminar­-Velikovsky: The Decade Ahead -- held
on May 31, 1980 and sponsored by KRONOS. Other papers from that
seminar will be appearing in the pages of KRONOS as well. -
LMG

[2] A
portion of Shamir was published in, KRONOS VI: 1,
pp.48-50, under that title.

[12] Translation by S. N.
Kramer, Quoted in John O'Neill, You and the Universe (N.
Y 1946), p. 41. [For a slightly different translation and
different interpretation of the document, see "Cosmology and
Psychology" in KRONOS 1: 1, p. 41. - LMG]